Over the past few weeks I’ve been familiarizing myself with WordPress. I’ve found it to be very easy to customize. Also, being able to make updates to the site without having to edit the HTML files is nice. In the past I’ve made custom content management systems for some of my clients but after discovering the power of WordPress realized that they would have probably just been happier with WordPress!
So now I’m using it! Check out the site, and see some of the things it can do. If you like it you may want to consider purchasing a site. The chompBasic and chompPlus web packages now give you a WordPress site, so check out the new services page if you’re interested!
I've been meaning to do this for quite some time and have finally started to add this to DreamSphere.
No game using a RPG like system would be complete without status effects! The freeze effect is shown here, the first one to be implement thus far. These blob guys have a 40% resistance since their element is ice(and the blue ones are fire… yep it's backwards). This makes them pretty hard to freeze but not impossible.
I should also note that Maleia can be frozen too though that hasn't been implemented. In the final game most of the enemies will be casting spells as well. So you'll have to deal with the status effects just like your enemies.
I've started school up again, which probably means less time to devote to my game. We shall see shan't we?
Too busy playing Minecraft. It's a very dangerous game because it looks very innocent at first, like a game that you might try out for like 10 minutes and get bored of. That is not the case! I know a game is fun when I am completely oblivious of time passing while I'm playing it.
If has a very retro look to say the least. You definitely have to get over the blocky graphics but it's not hard to do. The randomly generated environments are still pretty breath taking at times, even if they are a bunch of rather large cubes stuck together with different highly pixelated textures on them.
The multiplayer is still in it's earliest stages but it's still a ton of fun to check out what the other players are building and then go off and build you our stuff, or even team up with someone to build something truly awesome. At $13 USD(10 Euros) this game is a good buy if you've got a ton of free time!
Oh and I'm not the only one to succumb to Minecraft's charm. The TF2 Development team has also fallen prey(and I'm sure tons of others) so uh…don't expect any updates for any of your favorite games anytime soon.
I should note though that the game is still in Alpha and is still quite buggy, especially in multiplayer. Hasn't stopped me from enjoying it but a lot of things still aren't available yet.
It shows two things the element the enemy is most resistant too and the HP of the enemy. In most cases the opposing element would be its weakness. Definately not going to be a required ability but most players will probably wants to throw it on when encountering a new type of enemy.
One more thing about abilities… I have decided that you will be able to equip more then one ability but not initially. You'll either have to gain more ability equips by leveling or by finding them in the game world…or perhaps both.
Finally notice the yellow in the mental bar. It's an idea I sort of stole from Monster Hunter. Originally I was just going to have mental restore by itself over time but I decided that only mental used to cast spells could be recovered. The yellow area indicates the amount of mental that can be recovered.
To celebrate the 100th subversion revision(100 since I started using subversion) I am releasing a game play video of DreamSphere! Please provide feedback!
I have been working more of improving my cut scene system so I thought I'd show off a few screenshots.
A recreation of a cut scene from Demo 1 though the dialog has been changed up a bit.
The first Cyclob(one eyed blobs, yep nice name) encounter.
First tutorial cut scene demonstrating Maleia's ledge grab ability.
Second tutorial cut scene demonstrating the wall jump. These are both abilities they weren't present in the first demo.
So essentially I designed this cut scene system to be easy to use. The idea is that there will be a time when all there is left to do is make levels and cut scenes and when that time comes it will be a very easy and straight forward process.
Finally… if anyone noticed the text boxes in each picture is in a slightly different spot that's something I just noticed too! *goes to fix*
You guys are just going to have to learn to accept it…
That's right she's dead!! And mister innocent looking blob killed her!
Hey so yeah…you can die now in DreamSphere! Best be careful.
That's not all though! The game now has sound thanks to Pygame. I reused the music from the first Demo since it was mostly awesome. A friend of mine actually game into the room while I was testing the game the other day and heard the music and said “Hey that sounds like Final Fantasy VII!” Ha he was wrong of course but if my dad's music is sounding like another game with great music in it then we're doing something right here!
Speaking of Demos… I am really really hoping to have Demo #2 ready soon. It's been a year and a half since the first one so I know you are all dying to see it.(Really? lol…)
The demo will be released in the form of a P3D file which will require the Panda3D runtime to play. It's simple to get just go to [url]http://www.panda3d.org/download.php?runtime[/url] and download it! Once you get your hands on my P3D file you'll just merely have to double click it to boot the game up!
Patience my (probably not so) dedicated blog readers!
Ok I think I'll make this short and sweet for once, just showing off a few pictures from recent developments.
First, that rendering I did a few weeks ago is now a playable level…
If you expected it to look just like the render then your expectation of my skills is a bit too high! Regardless it looks very nice in my opinion and I think most players will like it!
Second, I've been working on the abilities system. As I may have stated already you'll find abilities you can equip throughout the game that give you nice little random perks.
Here is what the menu is to look like. And if you wondering what Levitate looks like…
Works just like the hover boots in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time! You can hover for a small amount of time before falling. It only works when walking off of a ledge, not when jumping up.
Also the other ability in the abilities menu at the moment is called 'Perception' and it will allow you to see the health of all the enemies. I imagine it'll place a health bar above the enemy's heads with a icon representing its elemental weakness next to it.
The menu is coming along nicely…still have plenty more work to do though!
I am no where near done with the in game menus but I just finished enough of it to show it off.
First off, yes the status page is incomplete, I still need to put the mental and exp information under the level.
Secondly, I wanted to talk about some of her stats…
Mental is health in this game. It represents your mental health state. Monsters will constantly try to drain you on mental health so that you can fully become a host to extending the existence of the dream world.
Magic represents your mental abilities and your ability to affect the mental status of others who exist in the dream world. Namely being the monsters.
Spirit represents your mental recovery. The higher it is the faster you are able to recover from a mind assault!
Resistances represent the different ways the mind can be penetrated, they take the form of different elemental attacks. I should also note that resistance also affect your offensive abilities with those elements.
Pushin' along…
UPDATE: Yep I spelled abilities wrong. Or maybe it's a cool new way to spell it, you decide!
I haven't much felt like implementing the ingame menu in the game so I started working on a level instead. I decided to make a fancy rendering of it so everyone could enjoy it!
I just get random inspirations to make these kinds of levels. The cool thing is that given the nature of the game I can do whatever I want for levels and technically nothing have to make sense! Naturally I still want a seamless world for the most part but it's not going to be perfect.
I know this rendering isn't perfect. Someone already pointed out that textures need aligning and it's pretty clear that the ground gets clipped off by the sky dome. If you don't like my shotty attempt at a fancy 3D rendering then you probably will like Digital Blasphemy's. Yep my desktop backgrounds on all my computers have his renderings!
Well guys… I think it's time to set a deadline for myself. I want to have a video I can show you guys of the game by the end of July. If at all possible a playable demo as well. Right now there simply isn't enough content to make offering any of that really worthwhile.
